


when the bell tolls

by EllisLuie



Series: love is loud(er) [5]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Klaus is not great mentally, Past Drug Addiction, Pre-Canon, Sober Klaus Hargreeves, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, implied/referenced suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:02:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25544065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllisLuie/pseuds/EllisLuie
Summary: Vanya had known her book would cause problems.akaKlaus isn't doing well when Vanya finds him. Maybe she isn't either.
Relationships: Klaus Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves
Series: love is loud(er) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1807864
Comments: 42
Kudos: 464





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i really want to finish this series before season 2 but. we'll see i guess
> 
> uhh tw for klaus's not so hot mental state?? we only see vanya's view of things but mention of i guess self-harm and suicidal ideation?

Vanya had known the book would cause problems.

As soon as she’d laid her fingers on the typewriter, punched out the first sentence, she’d seen her siblings’ faces, clear as day. Angry. Betrayed. Surprised. She’d known from the first idle thought, the first daydream of what she would say if only the world would listen, that her siblings wouldn’t understand. They’d be hurt by the book, would never see it coming, but that was the  _ point, _ because even now they were all so willfully blind, oblivious to all the hurt they’d caused her, been complicit in her forced isolation. They wouldn’t expect all that she had to say in the book because they’d never once stopped to pay her any thought whatsoever.

She didn’t consider herself a vindictive person, but she couldn’t deny that it felt good, putting everything she had onto the pages, writing the siblings she remembered into immortality. It couldn’t be taken away then, couldn’t be ignored or forgotten, no one could tell her she was wrong, that it hadn’t happened like that, because when it was on the page, it was  _ real _ . 

The idea for the book, of telling her story, had been an idle dream that had first sprouted in childhood. She would watch her siblings pose for pictures, appear on magazine covers, comic books, action figures, see people fall in love with the Umbrella Academy, desperate to learn more about them, and she would dream about people caring about her like that. She wasn’t as interesting, perhaps, had never met presidents or broken the thumbs of spies, but Vanya had a story to tell and she’d always longed for someone to listen. Nothing might have come from it, except her therapist had recommended she tell that story.

Well, maybe she hadn’t quite recommended everything that followed. Initially, the idea had been just to write letters, mainly to Dad, but maybe to her siblings if she felt like she had anything to say to them. Her therapist had clarified that Vanya wasn’t meant to  _ send  _ these letters, not unless she really wanted to; it was a personal exercise to help resolve internal conflict rather than external. 

Vanya had started writing a letter to Dad, but halfway through it had turned into a compendium of all the slights against her rather than an actual message to her father. And it had felt good, like a release, like she was finally confronting him even though he would never read it. It had felt so good, in fact, that she had kept writing. Soon, her frustrations with Dad had bled into further points on each of her so-called family members in turn, and all the while she’d known they would never forgive her.

She’d published it anyway.

A small part of her, a part of her that she’d spent the last ten years ruthlessly trying to squash, hoped her family would read the book. They wouldn’t like it, would be surprised, uncomfortable (although sometimes, when she was feeling especially bitter, she wondered if they wouldn’t appreciate the renewed attention her book would bring them. After all, they’d fallen out of the spotlight over the years, but her book would surely bring them back into the public’s eye), but maybe they’d actually sit down and listen to what Vanya had to say for once in their lives. Maybe then they would see what it had been like for her, growing up alongside them, and they’d see how cruel they had been, how lonely she had felt. Maybe, just maybe, they would understand.

That hope, minuscule and childish as it was, had survived through the initial sudden flare of popularity, the book signings, the interviews, the sheer  _ attention _ that was focused on her for the first time in her life. The book had caused quite a stir, with newspapers and magazines and journalists relishing in all the newly revealed skeletons of the Umbrella Academy, and Vanya felt vindicated and flush with success and thoroughly overwhelmed. 

Diego was the first sibling Vanya saw after releasing the book.

She’d been doing a reading at a local bookstore, just on the tail end of its popularity, and she’d seen him on the street through the window. She’d stumbled over the words, distracted, half-panicked, half-hopeful, wondering if he was going to come inside to see her. He had to have read the book, she thought, otherwise he wouldn’t be there, and she was genuinely pleased.

(they hadn’t been the closest as kids - five had always been her one true confidant - but diego had been kind to her, generally. he was rude and dismissive as a teenager, but he’d rarely been outright cruel to her, and he was the one she’d stayed in contact with the longest after leaving the Academy, though they’d fallen out of touch depressingly fast)

But then Vanya had met his eyes through the glass.

He’d looked angry, which wasn’t unfamiliar, except he’d never looked at her with such vehement  _ fury  _ before. It made something shrivel inside her, cowering and afraid, because her siblings had never considered her as one of them, had never cared about her like they did each other, but they’d never hated her before, either. 

She’d seen Diego angry before, had seen him furious and frantic and grieving, but he’d never looked at her with hatred. Sometimes he looked at Luther with a fire she found hard to witness, but even then he’d never actually  _ hated  _ him, and everyone knew Diego and Luther had the worst relationship of all of them.

Well, until now, apparently. 

He hadn’t been on the street by the time she finished the reading, and she had been pathetically grateful. 

That had been several months ago, and Vanya hadn’t heard from any of her siblings since. None of them had reached out to her about the book, even in the height of its popularity, and certainly not now that she was slowly fading back into obscurity. It was a cruel quirk of fate, she thought, that no matter what she did, no one ever took proper notice of her. Even when all the newspapers knew her name, even when people stopped her on the streets, it was all about the Umbrella Academy, her siblings, not her. And now that the novelty had worn off, the secrets exposed, the drama unveiled and subsequently ignored (journalists had attempted to reach out to Reginald Hargreeves, to hear his take on the book, but of course he never answered), the world was back to dismissing Vanya Hargreeves. 

Vanya had known her book wouldn’t be received well by her family, but she’d at least expected (hoped) for some kind of reaction. Anything at all. 

(anything but the cold look in diego’s eyes, the last nail in the coffin, the irrefutable knowledge that it was really over now, she wasn’t their sister anymore)

She even sent a copy of the book to the Academy, specifically addressed to Dad, in a bid to get him to at least acknowledge her childhood, her existence. He’d never called or written, never indicated any interest. After twenty years she should have been used to it, but it still hurt. 

Months went by, filled with interviews and photos and pats on the back from her publicist, and some local over-exuberant journalist tried to get a hold of the Allison Hargreeves herself for a comment, but no call from Hollywood came. No angry message from Number One awaited Vanya on her answerphone, no late night visits to her apartment from Diego or Klaus. She’d done everything she could to make an impression on the world, and still her siblings barely acknowledged her. Even worse, the impression she had made was fleeting, brief, inconsequential.

After only seven months, people had stopped being interested in her altogether. No one recognized her on the street, or if they did, they didn’t care to. Her book didn’t fly off the shelves so much as it occasionally tumbled into unwitting and bored hands, and as a result it soon saw a significant decrease in price and sales. She’d achieved what she’d wanted to, she’d made sure the world knew what really went on behind the Academy’s closed doors, had told everyone who was still interested in the Umbrella Academy what it had been like as Number Seven - and still no one cared. 

At first, something like regret tried to take root in her brain. She’d thoroughly severed the last tendril of familial connection with the book, evident in the way Diego couldn’t even bear to look at her, and it had all been for nothing. Clearly, her words hadn’t moved her family into understanding her, into feeling bad for how they’d treated her. And the public certainly didn’t care about Vanya anymore than they’d cared about little Number Seven. She’d put everything she had out there and it had just made things worse. 

But the regret hadn’t had the chance to fully take form, because Vanya was angry. It was both a familiar and foreign feeling, because Vanya had known resentment for as long as she could remember, but she also struggled with holding onto emotions in general. Her therapist had indicated it probably stemmed from her neglectful childhood, but they hadn’t explored it much before Vanya stopped seeing her, distracted by the book.

So Vanya spent the months following the decline of her book grappling with her anger, clumsy and awkward, like a puzzle piece that didn’t fit. She sent her father a copy of the book but didn’t bother with any of her siblings, because they never bothered with her, and she told herself she was perfectly okay with never seeing any of them ever again.

Just as she was getting comfortable resigning herself to that eventuality, she saw Klaus.

He did not see her.

She was making her way home from giving one of her lessons (usually she didn’t like to make home visits, but the parents of this particular student were anxious socialites with a whole troop of nannies and very generous wallets), and since it was reasonably decent weather, she’d decided to forego a taxi, at least for the first several blocks. This, unfortunately, brought her within distance of the Academy. She purposely took the scenic route to avoid crossing within direct sight of the building, even though that meant a much longer walk to skirt around the entire city block.

As she was debating the merits of calling a taxi to take her the last stretch, she saw him across the street. She recognized him immediately, despite the road and cars between them, even though she hadn’t actually spoken to him since Ben’s funeral. But she’d seen him a few times over the years, emerging from alleys, stumbling into or out of bars, and the smudged eyeliner and hand tattoos were impossible to forget. When she’d seen him in the past, she’d always ducked her head and hurried past before he spotted her.

(one time she thought for sure he must have seen her, because she had been mere feet away, balancing her violin case in her hands, and she could have sworn she’d seen his head swivel in her direction as she scurried across the street. but she hadn’t looked back to make sure and he hadn’t called out)

The urge to do the same now was strong. Vanya hadn’t run into anyone except Diego since her book came out, and Klaus had never hesitated to say exactly what was on his mind. She remembered how caustic his words could be, how mean, and she decidedly did not want to hear what he had to say. It would be relatively easy, too, to continue on her way without his noticing, because there was a phone booth right ahead that she could use to call a taxi and stay huddled in until it came, and he seemed distracted anyway. She took a few steps towards the phone booth, but couldn’t resist looking over towards him as she did so. It had been awhile since she’d seen him, and she’d always found a horrible kind of fascination in studying him, like watching a (laughing) trainwreck in progress.

He was hovering on the edge of the kerb, heedless of the people around him, giving him strange, uneasy looks, muttering to their companions. He was facing the road, almost directly across from Vanya, and surely he could see her if he bothered to look. But he didn’t seem to be interested in looking at anything, just wavering slightly in place, like he was waiting for a lull in traffic so that he could cross.

It wasn’t the strangest Vanya had ever seen him behave, except it was. He was rarely that still, that subdued. He looked a million miles away.

It would be easy, so easy, to keep walking. To go home, make some tea, and psyche herself up for tomorrow’s orchestra practice. 

In the future, Vanya would never be able to satisfactorily explain why she’d, instead, found herself on the other side of the street, tentatively approaching her brother. Curiosity or anger or nostalgia, all of it and none of it.

“Klaus?” she said at his elbow, casting anxious looks at the people around them. She felt out of her depth, adrift, like someone would step forward and forcibly drag her back to reality. 

He didn’t respond, and she couldn’t remember if that was typical or not. She wanted to say it wasn’t, because Klaus never turned away an opportunity to be loud and boisterous and the centre of the universe, but also this was the brother who’d grown up ignoring her existence as much as the others, the brother who was consistently high as a kite on any and all drugs he could get his hands on. Vanya had done everything she could to avoid high Klaus, ever since they were teenagers, so she was happy to say she didn’t know what he was like under the influence. Maybe he was always spacey and vacant.

The thought that this was just a result of another high, maybe even normal, made her resolve tremble slightly. Maybe she really should just leave him after all, leave him to snap out of it on his own and doubtlessly find his way to the nearest party. Vanya had no desire to deal with a drugged out Klaus, and he was always drugged.

“Klaus, come on,” she tried again, impatient. He didn’t so much as twitch, and Vanya wondered if it was her. Maybe it was about the book. She felt a spike of that jagged anger. “I’m just trying to help,” she snapped, and in an unusual display of brazenness, she put a hand on his arm to  _ make  _ him look at her.

That  _ did  _ make him acknowledge her, but not in the way she was expecting. He spun at her touch, breath hitching, and yanked his arm away, stumbling backwards. He tripped over the kerb, wobbling precariously, before finding his feet just in time to avoid diving headfirst under the tires of an oncoming UPS truck. Vanya instinctively recoiled, horrified, raising her hands in surrender.

Klaus blinked, looking confused. He peered at her helplessly, like he didn’t know where he was or who she was, and made no move to step away from the road. 

Something, Vanya decided, was definitely wrong. 

“Vanya?” he said, sounding lost. 

“Hey, Klaus,” she said slowly, willing her voice to stop shaking. “What are you doing?”

He looked around, squinting, and wrapped his arms around his middle. He was, she noticed, bare foot. 

“They were being loud,” he finally found in himself to say, sounding like the words were coming from far away. He turned slightly to the left, facing empty air, away from Vanya. “I thought it would make them stop.”

“Make what stop?” Vanya asked, bewildered. A small crowd was accumulating behind them, pointing at Klaus, and a couple motorists were slowing down and making rude gestures at the man hanging out in the road. She felt herself shrinking under their eyes and wished she was back home.

“I know,” he said miserably, nonsensically. “I didn’t mean - Sorry.” He turned beseeching eyes towards the empty air at Vanya’s elbow, and she wondered what, exactly, he was on. She wasn’t familiar with drugs in the slightest, but even if he wasn’t hallucinating, he was clearly a danger to himself. 

For a moment, she regretted not having called a taxi as soon as she finished the lesson. She didn’t want to have to be the one to deal with this, but she couldn’t just leave him now, knowing something was wrong. If something happened to him after she left, she’d never forgive herself. He was a disaster and a drug addict and her brother, and she’d already lost  ~~ all ~~ two of them. She hadn’t been able to stop Five from leaving or Ben from dying, but maybe she could keep Klaus from doing something stupid and hurting himself, at least until whatever he’d taken wore off.

“Come on,” she said, and after a second’s hesitation, she extended her hand. “I know somewhere we can go, okay?”

(she hoped she wouldn’t regret showing him where she lived. maybe she should invest in more locks for her door and windows, in case he decided to come back for a more criminal visit in future)

Klaus stared at her hand. He twitched as a car flew past behind him, half turning his head, and Vanya had to forcibly stifle the horrible images that flashed before her eyes. Eventually, his eyes skated back to her, snagging on something over her shoulder, before settling on her face. Something tight and pained crossed his face.

“Will it be quiet?” he asked, uncertain and small

Vanya frowned. “Uh,” she said. “Yes?”

More people were beginning to speak behind them, curious and nosey and wondering if they were going to see a real train wreck, but Vanya made herself ignore them. It was extremely difficult, but she forced herself to keep watching Klaus, who wavered, conflicted, searching her face for something.

Finally, he leaned forward and took her hand.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so season 2 thoroughly booted me out of the writing groove and i'm still struggling to find my way back. i've elected to ignore it ever happened and continue happily writing various s1 fics.

Admittedly, Vanya had no idea what she was doing.

Klaus was huddled on her couch, staring at the mug in his hands as if he’d never seen tea before (could drug addicts drink coffee when they were high? caffeine counted as a drug, right, would it mix badly with whatever klaus was on? she didn’t know and wasn’t particularly willing to take that chance, so she had found an old stash of herbal tea her therapist had recommended). He was drawn and quiet and not at all like the brother Vanya remembered, and it was kind of freaking her out. 

She’d been hesitant to bring him back to her apartment because Diego had told her stories, in the past, of offering shelter to Klaus during bad weather and coming away with no brother and a noticeably emptier apartment. Klaus had always had sticky fingers, and while Vanya didn’t make a habit of collecting trinkets, she had no desire to see the few things she did have disappear. But, well, there was nowhere else to take him.

(once upon a time she might have called diego for help. he would have come over and thanked her for looking out for number four and then he would have dragged klaus out the door and they would have been okay and she wouldn’t have had to worry about it anymore)

(but she couldn’t call diego, so she was on her own. again.)

Vanya had no idea how to handle a drug addict. She’d spent a good portion of her life trying to avoid them, not in small part because she’d seen the deterioration of her brother from the sidelines and knew what she was trying to stay away from. She might have felt guilty, once, for watching it happen and doing nothing to reach out, but there was nothing she could have done anyway. She’d seen the early signs, they all had, but she couldn’t even stop her best friend from disappearing, so there was no chance she would have been able to stop Four from drinking, and she couldn’t stop Ben from dying so of course she couldn’t stop Klaus from shooting up after the funeral. Vanya had experience with being powerless, useless.

Except now Klaus was on her couch, high on who knew how many drugs, and Vanya didn’t know what she was doing but she knew she couldn’t let him leave, not yet. Not until he came back to himself more and she felt reasonably certain he wouldn’t immediately wander into traffic.

“Hey,” she said eventually, because Klaus was still blinking at the tea and, quite unlike the irritating chatterbox she remembered, hadn’t actually said anything since sitting down. They weren’t going to get very far if Vanya had to carry the conversation, but she could at least try. “Are you feeling any better?”

Absently, Klaus took a sip of the tea and promptly wrinkled his nose. “Just peaches,” he mumbled, now eyeing the mug with something closer to disgust. 

Vanya waited, but he didn’t offer anything else. Internally, she sighed to herself, because of course nothing with Klaus could ever be easy. She considered leaving him to it and holing herself up in her bedroom for a few hours with her violin, but she didn’t trust him not to steal something and slip away as soon as her back was turned - and there was still something off about him. She didn’t know what it was, because she hadn’t properly spoken to him in years, but it made her uneasy.

“Is it,” she paused, uncertain, “quiet?” 

(she couldn’t hear anything other than the faint noises from the road outside her window and the humming of the heater, but klaus had always been able to hear … more than the rest of them, and he’d seemed pretty desperate back on the street)

For the first time since they’d arrived, Klaus looked at her properly. He looked tired, distant, and if they had been closer, Vanya might have asked about the bags under his eyes, the chewed nails, the scars. But they weren’t, so she didn’t.

“Yes,” he said finally. “Much better,  _ Danke _ . A little riffraff downstairs, but they’re distracted by Jerry Springer for now. Maybe they’ll give me a recap when they visit later, I missed this week’s drama.” He smiled wanly. 

Vanya didn’t really understand that, but that was pretty normal when it came to Klaus, so she decided to just go with it. Klaus’s ghosts had always been a point of mystery, of curiosity, and she only understood the very bare minimum, both because no one ever discussed powers with ordinary Vanya and because Klaus was always cryptic and unhelpful when it came to explaining them. He was like that generally with everything, but she was pretty sure he was deliberately obtuse when it came to the ghosts. 

Klaus shifted on the couch, tucking his feet under him and ducking his head. He seemed more present now, which was a good sign, and Vanya hoped he was coming down. If he was getting sober, he’d probably try to take off soon, but hopefully he’d stay long enough for her to be reasonably confident in releasing him into the wild. If he’d gotten hurt before when he was spacey because she hadn’t helped him, she’d never forgive herself, but if he left sober her conscience would be relatively clear, which was all she could hope for.

“Hey, Van, why, uh - No, I mean, sorry I - ” He paused, frowned, shook his head. “Thank you,” he settled on, face twisted like the words were unfamiliar.

Vanya blinked.

“For, you know, taking me home. Like a stray cat.” He gestured absently but dropped his hand halfway through, eyes trained firmly on empty air rather than on her. “You didn’t have to do that.” He did look at her then, fleeting and - nervous? Vanya couldn’t remember the last time Klaus had been nervous. She was pretty sure you had to possess a sense of shame for that, and that was something Klaus had never had.

“You looked like you could use some help,” she settled on saying, then wondered if that was a rude thing to say. It was true, though.

Klaus twitched. “Yeah,” he agreed quietly. “Probably shouldn’t have - ah, gone to visit.” He looked more like he was mumbling to himself rather than to her, so Vanya turned to her own tea to buy a few moments to think.

Having Klaus in her apartment was not ideal. She felt strange and alien in her own home, which was a feeling she was not eager to relive, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to relax properly while he was around. But she didn’t feel right turning him away just yet either. He seemed more coherent now, and his pupils didn’t look dilated, but there were a lot of different kinds of high and she wouldn’t even know where to begin assessing that kind of thing. He was more of a stranger than a brother at this point, but they were, technically, family, and despite his faults, she didn’t actually want anything to happen to him if she could help it. 

(it was different when he was out of sight out of mind, when she knew he was on the streets but didn’t really  _ know,  _ because it was easy to forget about him when she wasn’t writing about his biggest flaws. but he was in front of her now, making her an active player in his life, however briefly)

(maybe it was just nice to talk to a sibling, even if it was klaus, without the resentment and anger she’d been expecting since publishing the book. klaus was probably too high to even remember the book, but she’d take the false pleasantness for as long as it lasted, and hopefully he’d be long gone before he thought to confront her about it)

“I have an audition coming up and have to practice,” she said eventually, awkwardly, wondering if she was doing the right thing. “You can stay, if you want, for a little while. Maybe we can order takeout for dinner - I don’t really cook.” She felt herself grimacing a little self-consciously then, which was ridiculous, since she was pretty sure Klaus had no idea how to even turn on an oven. Of all her siblings, she probably had the least cause for shame around Klaus. “I can practice in the other room for tonight, so that it can stay, uh, quiet out here.”

Klaus shook his head quickly, perking up in his seat, looking livelier than he had all evening. “I’d  _ love  _ to hear you play,” he said, and he looked and sounded genuine. “I haven’t heard your music since we were kids, and you were good then, sure, but you’re probably  _ fantastic  _ now.”

She did remember playing for him as kids, vaguely. She would practice in her bedroom and at some point she would turn and find him hovering in the doorway with no sign of how long he’d been there. Sometimes Ben would sneak in too, which was nice, and it had been awkward and strange and she’d feared, at first, that they had just been there to make fun of her, but they never had. 

Klaus had always watched her play with a soft, contented look on his face, so unlike the usual manic grins he usually sported. If it kept him that same level of content now, at least long enough for him to come down, she was more than happy to oblige.

“Okay,” she said, and smiled back at him when he broke out in a grin. “But first, uh, do you… have anything on you?” She winced a little at herself, because this was so far outside her comfort zone she was practically with Luther on the moon, but she had to ask. She wanted to help Klaus, but she didn’t want any drugs in her home. What he did with his life was his business, but she wouldn’t hesitate to ask him to leave if he tried to take anything.

He blinked at her, looking surprised and - hurt? - but then twitched his head to the left and slumped his shoulders. “Oh, yeah,” he said, voice high and tight. “No, I mean no, I don’t have any goodies. Didn’t I mention? Clean as a whistle. My body’s a tomb, or whatever it is Diego preaches.” Probably seeing her doubtful look, he stopped and met her gaze steadily, which was unusual enough to make her still. “I don’t have any drugs, Van. Promise.”

For whatever reason, she believed him. The whole sobriety thing was up for debate, since he definitely didn’t  _ seem  _ sober, not when he had been teetering on that sidewalk, so out of it he’d barely recognized her, and not even now, carrying conversations but still inexplicably odd. But she chose, maybe naively, to believe he was telling the truth about not having any on him. 

So she dug out a takeout menu from one of the kitchen drawers and quickly shoved it into his hands, then retrieved her violin and set up near the windows, trying to ignore the eyes she felt behind her. The hair on the back of her neck prickled, and her fingers felt clumsy on the strings, but eventually she managed to tune everything out the way she usually did during concerts and the room - and her brother - fell away.

-

Klaus seemed more like himself while they picked at the takeout a few hours later. Vanya was a little more relaxed, calmer in a way only playing her violin helped with, and it seemed like the music had helped Klaus, too. He was still a little scattered and tended to zone out every now and then, but it didn’t feel like he was high or other, unwelcome in her home. The tension between them was a little less, and it was nice in a way she hadn’t expected.

He even managed to make her laugh, fumbling with his chopsticks for a moment and then telling her in a hushed voice all about Luther’s absolute inability to use them properly, and about his theory that the only reason Diego could use them at all was because he used his powers to cheat. 

(it stung a little bit, hearing klaus discuss their powers so cavalierly, hearing that diego used them so easily, so mundanely, while vanya had to do everything the normal way, the ordinary way, but the comforting ache in her shoulders and fingers from practice made it easy to push the thoughts away)

“I used to listen to you play all the time,” Klaus sighed, sprawled out on her couch. It was late, much later than she’d anticipated, stars appearing out her window, but she was, surprisingly, in no hurry to call it a night. It was peaceful and she was reveling in it, because she didn’t know how long it would last. 

“I remember,” she said. “You’d always just appear by the door. I never knew when you’d show up.”

“Sometimes I didn’t,” he said, pushing his face into a pillow, voice muffled. He looked ready to pass out. “I could hear you through the wall, you know. Bedrooms next to each other like that. If I sat right against the wall, it drowned everything else out. When everything was so loud, I could just listen to you play and know you were real, because the music was beautiful.” He snorted. “Ghosts don’t sound like that.”

He wriggled further into the couch, eyes closed, and didn’t seem to think anything of this confession. Vanya, however, could only look at him in quiet surprise. She’d suspected, of course, because Klaus had been a little more open about the ghosts when they were little, and he’d always used music as a distraction, but he’d never actually said it out loud before, not to her, and it was strange to have those half-formed suspicions confirmed. 

“What do the ghosts sound like?” she asked tentatively, because she’d always wondered. Generally she made it a rule not to think or ask about her siblings’ powers, because she was very firmly not welcome in that world, and it was better to let sleeping dogs lie. But she’d always been  ~~ jealous ~~ curious about them, and she’d only ever felt comfortable asking Five, but had never understood the mathematical jargon he’d tended to give her in response.

Klaus didn’t answer, presumably asleep.

Probably for the best, she thought. The night had gone surprisingly well, all things considered, and there was no need to ruin it by discussing her least favourite topic. She didn’t particularly want to hear about the ghosts Klaus had flirted with as a teen anyway, the people only he could see, the havoc he could have wreaked with them. 

With him asleep, though, she was faced with a new dilemma. She had intended to let him stay for dinner, get some food in him, let him sober up, then politely get him out the door. But it was late, he was tired, and he hadn’t actually been that insufferable. It wouldn’t feel right kicking him out now. One night wouldn’t hurt, anyway.

(unless he woke up and decided to swipe her things to pawn for drug money before he woke up, which was a depressing but real possibility. but they’d had a decent evening, and she’d like to think he wouldn’t completely ruin it by stealing from her at this point, though maybe that was naive. he was a drug addict, after all, even if he did say he was clean)

Eventually, arguing with herself the whole time, Vanya decided to gather the more valuable and sentimental belongings she had around the living area and put them in her bedroom for the night. She hoped Klaus wouldn’t betray her already tenuous trust and steal from her, but if he did, at least it wouldn’t be anything too devastating to lose. Then, feeling a little guilty, she fetched a spare blanket from the hall closet and draped it over Klaus.

As she turned to head to bed herself, violin case in hand (surely klaus wouldn’t steal her violin, even if he was desperate, right? not when he’d told her what her music had meant to him growing up? she didn’t know for sure, and she hated that. best to store it in her room anyway), a quiet voice floated up from behind her.

“Did you mean what you wrote?” Klaus asked, hushed, and Vanya carefully did not turn around to look at him. “About not being a real family.”

She hesitated. She’d been braced for a confrontation all night, but this wasn’t what she’d been expecting. She felt off-balance, caught. But the room was dark and her back was turned, so she wasn’t looking at him, couldn’t see his face, and his tone was idle, flat, hanging suspended between them.

“Go to sleep, Klaus,” she said, not quite gentle but not harsh, either. 

A beat of silence, then a soft: “Goodnight, Van.”

“Goodnight, Klaus.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> had the first part of this chapter written out completely differently, got stuck, had too much caffeine, completely rewrote everything and then kept going. somehow this chapter ended up very nearly doubling the entire fic word count because it's twice as long as the other two chapters... 
> 
> tw: some talk of self-harm this chapter, specifically related to anxiety

Klaus talked in his sleep.

It came as a surprise, though it probably shouldn’t have. Vanya had vague memories of hearing Klaus through their shared wall at night, the low hum of his voice following her into sleep night after night for years. It had happened more when they were little, before things started to rot, and by the time her siblings started doing victory tours through the city, she barely heard him at all. Except when he woke up the whole house screaming, of course.

(by then, things had gotten fraught enough between them all that she didn’t even consider asking him if anything was wrong. nightmares were not an uncommon occurrence in the hargreeves house, and she’d always dealt with hers on her own, so why couldn’t he? it had stopped eventually, anyway, though she’d realized after moving out that it probably meant dad had sound-proofed klaus’s room rather than that the nightmares had actually gone away)

(she wondered if he kept screaming anyway, without anyone to hear)

Thankfully, the screaming didn’t seem to be something he’d carried into adulthood, at least not that she could tell. Mostly he just mumbled indistinctly, a few sentences or words, occasionally fragments of a one-sided conversation that was, frankly, fascinating to listen to.

Not that Vanya made it a habit to listen. That was probably a huge breach of privacy. 

But, well. He was in her living room. And he was a decently heavy sleeper, since he barely even stirred as she went about her normal routines, which she thought was kind of funny. What happened to the finely tuned survival instincts Dad insisted they all develop? Even she’d received enough of that training to startle awake at sudden noises, yet Klaus slept like - well, like the dead. 

Except she didn’t think the dead talked this much. (Er, figuratively speaking. Maybe?)

“Not the left,” Klaus said to her pillow. “Mm, yellow.”

Vanya felt more than a little awkward sitting in the armchair across from him, but she didn’t really want to surrender her living room to her brother. This was her apartment, her couch, and she wasn’t going to drink her coffee in her bedroom like some kind of timid interloper just because Klaus was just as mouthy in sleep as he was while awake. Besides, it was kind of - nice, listening to him. She’d missed his mindless chatter, just as she’d missed the general presence of other people. It was weird going from a house of seven (five?) children to an empty apartment, and she’d had a few years to adjust but it still got to her sometimes.

Plus, it gave her the chance to examine him as much as she wanted. She hadn’t properly seen him in years, and he somehow looked both better and worse than she’d imagined. He definitely didn’t look what she’d call healthy, but he also didn’t look quite as horrible as the occasional nightmare would suggest. When she’d first moved out, back when she still had some kind of relationship with Diego, he’d told her about Klaus, every now and then. About how he was killing himself on the streets, strung out like a ghost himself, the poster boy for heroin addiction, and in the years since, the few glimpses she’d caught of him seemed to confirm that.

He looked better now. Still thin and pale, clothes worn and less than pristine, but overall he didn’t exactly scream ‘addict’ anymore. That could just be because he was drooling onto her throw blanket, though, unfairly reminding her of when they were kids.

This was not the man she had pictured when she wrote her book, and she wasn’t sure how to feel about that, so she pushed the thought away to deal with later, or, preferably, never.

It was interesting to look at his tattoos up close, with one of his hands trailing off the edge of the couch, palm opened to the ceiling. _Goodbye_ to match _Hello_. Dad’s walking, talking Ouija board. She was faintly surprised that he seemed to embrace that so readily when he’d always thrown a tantrum about using his powers as a kid, but maybe that was just his dark sense of humour at play. Or maybe he really had fully embraced it, finally, now that he had to find an actual identity for himself outside of the Umbrella Academy.

It was too early in the morning to be feeling so bitter, so Vanya tried to follow the exercises her therapist had told her about that were supposed to break the pattern of unhealthy thinking. She had varied success, but it helped that Klaus was still unconscious and thus unlikely to rile her up properly.

The most disturbing thing about his appearance, she thought to distract herself, wasn’t the sickly pallor of his skin or the ridiculous clothes she was pretty sure could have been found in the dumpster of the local thrift store. It was the scars scattered across his face, dotted down his neck, peeking through the neckline of his shirt. They looked completely healed, if not fully faded, and they made something in her stomach curdle because she recognized them. She had a set of matching ones on the back of one of her hands, a collection of silver marks left by her own nails a few years ago, back when she was new to the whole independence thing. 

She’d struggled with anxiety her whole life, had been taking meds for it for as long as she could remember, had felt uncomfortable in her own skin and separated from her own emotions since she was too small to properly vocalize it, and she’d been through the whole roster of variously successful coping mechanisms. The - scratching hadn’t lasted long, because it wasn’t overly useful in actually managing her anxiety, but for the first few months after moving out of the Academy she’d found herself doing it subconsciously, just to have something to do with her hands. Thankfully, she’d managed to stop after starting therapy, but the scars remained and she hated seeing them, both on her own skin and now on her brother’s.

The thought that she and Klaus maybe had more in common than she thought wasn’t as pleasant as she’d imagined it would be. 

“No,” Klaus keened lowly, scrunching his face. “I’m sorry. Go away, please.”

He’d said something similar back when she’d first woken up and started to make a pot of coffee, and she’d considered trying to wake him then but he’d settled not long after. She hoped he’d wake up soon, though, because her mug was almost empty and she had planned on running errands today. Leaving him to sleep on her couch for the night was one thing; leaving him completely unsupervised in her apartment for hours was something else entirely.

“Sorry,” Klaus said again, and she was pretty sure she’d never heard him that contrite before. Figured that he was more considerate to the phantoms in his dreams than to any of his family in real life. 

“Uh, Klaus,” she said, leaning towards the couch. “Klaus?”

He gave a full body shudder, and for a second she thought he’d woken up, because he said a quiet “Van?”, like he recognized her beside him. But then his face screwed up more, distressed, and his eyes stayed firmly closed.

“No, Van, I’m sorry,” he said, quiet, rough. “Don’t. Diego, no.” He suddenly jerked his arms to his chest, a rumble in his chest, then abruptly woke up gasping.

He rocketed up, wild-eyed, looking around in a panic, and Vanya felt completely out of her depth. She threw up her arms, palms out, and tried to sneak a peek at his pupils while his eyes darted past her. There hadn’t been any overt evidence of drug use either in the living room or the bathroom, but she couldn’t be too sure.

“Klaus,” she said, and he flinched. That was weird, since she was probably the least threatening sibling out of literally all of them, but whatever. “You’re at my place, remember? Good morning?” She smiled thinly, feeling it sit oddly on her face, but it seemed to soothe him anyway.

“Right,” he said, blinking. “Morning, Vanya.”

He still looked a little bleary, but at least mostly present, which was probably the best she was going to get. 

“Coffee?” she offered, because her concerns from last night still stood but the chances of him actually being high now were slightly less than they had been last night. Plus, she wasn’t particularly interested in digging out the tea again. 

He put a disgusting amount of cream and sugar into the mug she gave him, but it did seem to restore him to some level of functional humanity, so she couldn’t argue with that too much.

“Listen,” she started, stilted, stubbornly keeping hold of her empty mug because the thought of just sitting there watching him drink was not appealing. “I have to do some chores today, so I’ll be out of the house for - awhile.” She left the end hanging, hoping he wouldn’t make her actually say the words. She’d never had to kick him out before (he’d never visited before), and while she’d imagined it being easy in the past, when she just knew him tangentially as a fractured drug addict, she wasn’t confident it would actually play out that easily now.

Luckily, he seemed to get it. 

“No worries, Van. I’ll get out of your hair.” He gave her a clumsy salute, almost spilling his coffee, and didn’t meet her eyes. “Uh, hey. Thanks again, for - you know. Sorry to make you do that.”

Just as it had last night, the gratitude took her by surprise. It was strange to hear, both because one of her mighty siblings was actually willing to concede politeness to her, and because she hadn’t actually done anything that special or selfless. It wasn’t like she could have just left him there to stumble into traffic - he was her brother, and she had no desire to lose any more of those, even if they were barely family at this point. Honestly, it was almost cathartic, being able to actually help Klaus in a way she hadn’t been able to help Five or Ben. 

The gratitude was nice, but she didn’t really want it.

(little seven would have reeled from that, she thought. all she’d wanted her entire life was to be acknowledged by her siblings, yet here she was too uncomfortable to accept it)

True to his word, Klaus downed his coffee in record time and graciously left, leaving her alone. As she closed the door behind him, she felt a strangely disappointed, hollow. Her life was back to normal, but it didn’t feel right.

She dumped the coffee mugs in the sink and turned to her errands.

-

Vanya couldn’t describe the feeling in her chest when she saw Klaus waiting outside her front door that evening.

He’d changed clothes since he’d left, having thankfully found a pair of shoes this time. She was almost positive the purple crop top he was wearing had been Allison’s as a teenager, but that wasn’t her concern and she doubted their superstar sister missed it, anyway. Overall, he looked slightly more put together than he had last night, which was surprisingly comforting. More comforting than his red and swollen eyes, anyway. Her first instinct was to assume it was from drugs, because it was Klaus and he’d been smoking weed since before Vanya could play the violin. But she revised that assumption quickly, because, while she had always done her best to avoid Klaus while he was under the influence, she was pretty sure weed made him happier, not somber. And somber was the only word she could think of looking at him now, hovering by her door, hunched in on himself and uncharacteristically quiet. Red eyes from crying, then, which was not something she’d ever expected to see.

“Sorry to barge in on you like this, sis,” he said as she approached. “But I was wondering if I could perchance listen to you play again? Ç’est enchanteur.” He smiled, but it sat strangely on his face, which was incredibly unusual considering Vanya had always thought Klaus’s face was made for grinning.

She opened the door and stepped aside to let him in.

Her audition was in a few days and she really did need to get in more hours of practice, because while she usually managed to hit all the right notes, she wanted to work on her form and feeling, because most of the criticism she’d heard about her playing was that she was too mechanical, too stiff, and she would never get third chair if she didn’t fix that. But something had her hesitating.

Klaus sank back into the seat he’d claimed last night, tucking his legs in close and staring resolutely forward, just left of the fireplace and thus out of range of anything remotely interesting. Vanya hovered for a moment between the kitchen and her bedroom, debating, and saw the way he cringed away from nothing, empty air, with a grimace.

Instead of retrieving her violin, she turned to the kitchen.

A few minutes later, Klaus looked at the hot chocolate she pushed into his hand in confusion. Slowly he took it, handling it tentatively, and watched her settle beside him with her own cup.

“You’re sober,” she said, instead of _‘are you okay’_ or _‘why are you here’._ She didn’t realize she believed it until she said it, but now that she had it seemed obvious.

He nodded.

“Why?” she asked, genuinely curious. As far as she could tell, he’d never expressed any interest or intent to stop taking drugs, not since they were thirteen, much to the chagrin of Diego. She honestly hadn’t thought it would ever happen, not that she’d really spared it much thought over the years. Maybe when they were kids, before Ben, she might have cared a little more, but only in that his getting clean would have meant less tension in the house. 

(after ben died, she’d started thinking a bit more - morbidly. missions gained a whole new undertone that hadn’t really been there before, because she’d never actually thought one of her siblings would die while they were away. they were fighting dangerous people, sure, but they were special, they had powers, they could do anything. they weren’t supposed to _die._ she’d spent a lot of nights afterwards wondering which one of them would be next. luther, maybe, with his blind enthusiasm and dedication. diego with his recklessness. klaus with his stupid addictions)

Delicately, Klaus sipped at his hot chocolate, apparently deeming it to his satisfaction. He hummed appreciatively. 

“They stopped working,” he said plainly. He didn’t sound unhappy or frustrated or dramatic. Just stating a fact, bland and boring and utterly unlike him.

She frowned. “They stopped getting you high?”

“Oh, no, no, they still sent me into the stratosphere,” he corrected her lightly. “I would’ve been happy as a clam, of course, except they stopped keeping them quiet. They were still fun, but it’s hard to enjoy it when the undead parade is always in town.”

Vanya waited, but understanding didn’t come. She wondered if Klaus was doing it on purpose, being so vague, so cryptic, a holdover of a childhood of never letting Vanya in on the fun little powers club because obviously she would never understand. But he didn’t look like he was laughing at her expense; mostly he just looked tired, heavy, like the ground was slowly drawing him in.

“I don’t understand,” she finally admitted, the words sour on her tongue. She expected to feel the usual bitter defensiveness wash over her, but it didn’t happen. Maybe she was tired, too.

Klaus sighed, tilting his head to the side. For the first time, she wondered what he saw in her apartment, now that she knew he was sober and presumably fully in possession of his abilities.

“The drugs kept the ghosts away,” he said gently. “For years, they were my go to off button. Volume too loud? Off they go! Room too crowded? Buh-bye! Not the perfect solution, I admit, but handy enough. Then they stopped working, not that I wanted to believe that. Took a rotten batch and a truly nasty trip to finally convince me to kick the stuff.”

That seemed plausible enough, if unlikely.

“Is that how you,” she gestured to his face, “got those?” She purposely used her left hand, but didn’t otherwise call attention to her own scars. She didn’t think she needed to, though, because Klaus’s eyes followed her movement tellingly. 

“I … may have seen some unpleasant things,” he conceded, wincing a little. “I thought they were ghosts, at the time, but I was - wrong. Thankfully.”

“I don’t understand,” she said again, which normally would have set her immediately on edge, old insecurities flooding through, but only made her slightly antsy. If only interacting with her siblings was always this simple, civil. “How could hallucinations be better than actual ghosts? Especially ones that made you hurt yourself.”

Klaus looked away, working his jaw for a moment, as if reluctant. “The hallucinations were - bad,” he agreed. “But I’m just glad the people I saw weren’t actually ghosts. They're still alive.” He glanced at her quickly but couldn’t hold her gaze, instead turning to the empty armchair.

Vanya blinked. “Us,” she said, and it wasn’t a question. “You saw the Academy.”

“I saw my family dead and pissed at me,” he said quickly, lightly, like it didn’t devastate him to say. “All of you. Just as angry as the rest of them, screaming at me, and I thought - I thought it was real. That you’d all died horribly while I fucked off getting high, and now you were setting up to haunt me for the rest of eternity, just like - ” He cut himself off, exhaling loudly through his nose. 

She wasn’t sure what to say to that, wasn’t sure if there was anything she could say. “I’m sorry,” she settled on, even though that was woefully inadequate. “We’re not, though. Ghosts.”

She expected him to dismiss that out of hand, because obviously they weren’t, and he knew that. But instead he sighed, soft, and relaxed a bit. 

“Yeah,” he said. “I know. I knew that as soon as I woke up in the hospital, but I couldn’t stop - seeing you. Like that. Hearing it. As well as every other fucking ghost in this city. But I kept thinking… it could happen, right? One of you could die and come haunt me, and the first time I’ll see you in years will be your corpse, and you’ll have every right to be mad at me, and you’ll yell, because they all do, and you’ll be stuck like that, forever.”

Vanya felt sick just thinking about it. The idea of her siblings dying and never seeing them again was awful, yeah, and knowing the last time she really saw them was just after Ben’s funeral was - a hard thing to swallow when imagining literally never seeing them again. But reimagining the scenario for Klaus - Were they really all doomed to become ghosts haunting their addict brother? There had to be another fate waiting for them, right?

But even if there was, Klaus’s fear was still valid. Vanya couldn’t even imagine waking up one day and seeing, say, Allison’s ghost in her living room, knowing her sister was dead, miles away and years apart. They weren’t close, but that would be - horrible.

“Is that why you came back today?” she asked, trying to shake those thoughts away. Existential crisis later, questions now. “To see me?”

No one ever wanted to see her. Her siblings typically went out of their way to avoid seeing her.

Klaus nodded. “Diego picked me up from the hospital, and I stayed with him while I got clean. I visited Luther, too, and he tried to help me with my powers for a while, because sobriety actually makes it harder to function, which is incredibly unfair. I’ve even been talking with Allison lately, can you believe it? I don’t know how to - handle things, without the drugs, and things are not so great. I don’t know how long I can - Well, whatever. I just wanted to make sure I spoke to them all again, you know?”

Vanya was only half listening. There was a roaring in her ears and a tightness in her chest, that muted, jagged anger sitting funny again. She felt carefully removed from everything, an outside observer to her own anger, and handled it gingerly.

“You reached out to them,” she said, measured, even. “But not me. You didn’t reach out to me, not until I stumbled across you. Would you - would you have even - if I hadn’t - ” Her tongue no longer wanted to cooperate, but that was probably fine, because she wasn’t sure words really mattered anymore anyway.

Distantly, she was aware of Klaus turning to her, looking faintly surprised, then concerned. 

“Uh,” he said, raising his hands quickly. “Whoa, hey, Van, breathe. Of course I would have! I _did,_ remember? You’re my sister. I wrote you a letter, for our birthday? With a card? It wasn’t anything special, I know, I’m sorry, but - I wasn’t sure you’d want to hear from me, not right away, so I sent a letter instead of visiting. I’m sorry, please don’t be mad, I promise I wanted to!” He looked a little frantic now, eyes big, and she had to forcibly remind herself that he’d literally just told her that having his siblings so mad at him was part of what had driven him to permanently scar his face.

She felt fuzzy around the edges, anger like a rock in her chest, but she made herself breathe deeply, counting, and slowly came back to herself. The years old hurt and resentment was harder to control, but she’d lived with it at the forefront for eighteen years at the Academy, she could deal for another few minutes.

“A letter?” she repeated eventually, once she was mostly back in control. She felt a little bad seeing the way Klaus was clearly coaching his way through his own breathing, but it was hard to feel too deeply about that - or anything - right now. The humming of the heater was almost deafening until she pushed it away.

“Yeah,” Klaus said, quiet, small. Uncertain. “I sent it - I don’t know, November? Same time I sent Allison’s. I thought you didn’t reply because you didn’t want to talk to me.”

Vanya tried to think back. November hadn’t been a great month for her, her book having taken its first real nosedive in sales. She’d also been struggling at the orchestra, more so than usual, because the new violinist, Helen, had just come in and blown everyone away. She did vaguely remember some sort of card in the mail, but it had been a cheap glittery monstrosity that had wished her a happy birthday weeks after the fact, and she hadn’t bothered to open it or even really read the spidery writing on the envelope. She’d honestly thought it was sent by a fan of her book, or maybe someone at her publicist’s agency as a sort of PR service. 

“Oh, God,” she said faintly. “I didn’t even read it.”

Klaus shrunk back into the couch, visibly hurt.

“No, I mean, I didn’t realize it was from you,” she hastily explained. “Klaus, I - I am so sorry. Of course I would have wanted to talk to you.”

(would she, though? she wouldn’t have known klaus was sober, or that his interest was genuine. maybe she would have thrown it out anyway. god, what if she hadn’t found him last night? would they never have seen each other again? would klaus have reunited the whole family without her? would it have been her fault?)

“Yeah. Yeah, obviously,” he said, forcing a laugh. “Who wouldn’t want to talk to me? I’m a delight.”

She smiled at him, and she knew it was probably weak, but it was the best she could offer for now. It did get him to smile back, if unsteadily, so she counted it as a tentative win.

“I’m sorry all that happened,” she said carefully, because the last hour probably needed a whole team of psychologists to fully unpack and she didn’t have nearly enough energy to even begin to face it right now, and she doubted he did either. “But, for the record, I’m glad to see you and know you’re okay.”

“Ditto,” he said immediately.

She took their mugs to the sink just for something to do, a chance to stand up and disentangle herself from the heavy atmosphere they’d created. Klaus looked as relieved as she felt.

She saw him flinch again, just a little, as she turned away from the sink. She wouldn’t pretend she fully understood, or even half understood, but she did know something that would at least help the both of them, as well as give them a convenient excuse not to further discuss things, at least not yet.

Klaus looked painfully relieved to see the violin when she came back, and she had to admit that it was kind of nice, having someone so eager to play audience. She never really felt that at the orchestra, not individually, and it reminded her of simpler, if not better, times, with Five, with Ben, even Klaus. All she had to do was make music her brothers liked. 

(her music was real, klaus had said. real and beautiful and thoroughly alive. screw what the critics said; that was best review she could get)

-

That night, Klaus once more asleep on her couch, Vanya stayed awake for a long time.

Klaus was sober. Klaus was homeless. Klaus was obviously even more traumatized now than he had been when they all first left the Academy. He was reaching out to all of them, reuniting, because he was terrified of them dying. 

(she hadn’t been all too invested when she’d seen news of luther’s moon trip. it was weird to think about, her brother going into space, but it felt like another life, like one of the comics written about her siblings. fantasy. she wondered what klaus thought, how he felt, knowing contact with luther would be close to impossible for the foreseeable future. she wondered why klaus had been blocks from the Academy, barefoot, completely out of it with no immediate trigger. she wondered if she dared to ask)

Klaus had… said some concerning things. She’d been distracted at the time, embroiled in her own anger, but in retrospect, there had been some red flags. He didn’t know how to function without the drugs. Things were hard to handle, not so great. He didn’t know how much longer he could - what? He said things were loud, that he wanted them to be quiet but the only thing that ever made them quiet were the drugs, and they didn’t work anymore, so it was always loud. 

He said her violin helped. That was nice, comforting, knowing she could at least offer something. Well, besides her couch. But she couldn’t play all the time, and it wasn’t exactly a solution. She didn’t really know what else to do, though. He’d only been back in her life for two days, and it hadn’t exactly been smooth sailing. 

Maybe the key was in what Klaus had already been doing. Maybe the answer was obvious. He was reaching out to their family because he was scared, haunted by what he’d seen, and maybe that was how she - they - could help. He said he’d been in regular contact with the others, so they probably knew more about his mental state and how to help than Vanya did (they had their whole childhoods to draw from, too, while vanya had barely more than these two days. but she wasn’t dwelling on that resentment right now, she could deal with that later).

Luther was on the moon and Vanya honestly wasn’t sure how to even begin getting in contact with Allison, but she still had Diego’s number, presuming he still frequented the same gym. Maybe she’d try calling him tomorrow. 

Seeing him again wouldn’t exactly be fun, but at least there’d be one more person to help keep Klaus in one piece.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> everyone is leaving such nice comments, it's so lovely! thank you!
> 
> anyway, technically only one more sibling left in this series. but since five's perspective will be apocalypse week, timeline wise, there'll be a couple intervening years between that fic and this one. i'm considering writing a kind of inbetween fic, to bridge the gap, maybe from ben's pov since technically he shared his with klaus's... opinions?

**Author's Note:**

> i enjoy exploring vanya's deep-rooted anger and resentment towards her siblings, particularly in regards to her book, because i think she's largely oblivious to the extent of it and she's just. fascinating


End file.
